WhatsApp acquires the OK to support payments in India

WhatsApp Pay is a new digital transactions platform that has been in beta in India since 2019. The Facebook company had partnered with this country's ICICI Bank in order to deliver its new service, and had rolled it out to about a million users, as part of a trial run. Now, this has resulted in its final approval by the National Payments Corporation of India and the Reserve Bank of India.

Therefore, WhatsApp may now distribute its new initiative on a broader basis. It may prove extremely lucrative, as other companies that run similar payment functions have the potential to do big business in India. For example, Google Pay (or Tez, as it is known in this region) reportedly attracted over 240 million individual transactions in 1 month.

In addition, its current competitors PhonePe and Paytm facilitated approximately 230 and 200 million transactions respectively in the same time-frame. Therefore, this venture may prove worthwhile indeed for the already popular messaging app.